Taking a Chance on Love : Celebrating Valentine’s Day

Love. Something so essential and yet so confusing that everyone has thrown their 2 cents into this topic. Love. We need it, we thrive on it, a power that can create and if lost or unrequited, destroy. Commercialization aside, our pull and push with love makes February 14 a mixed bag. Whether or not you celebrate or rue this day, the matrix for Valentine’s Day is in place. Who is your “attitude tribe” as Caroline Myss calls it? There are good reasons to celebrate this day, in the name of Love. Because Love is what matters and in these intensified times, we could do to remember and experience the transcendent power of love.

Early Encounters with Valentine’s Day

I remember when we were young, we made Valentine’s Day cards at school, heart-shaped love notes fashioned from construction paper. Declarations of innocent love and friendship. Sneaking our hidden blushes of crushes into the open.

We give these cards to everyone in class, teachers too. At that tender age, we are taught and many have learned that exclusion was painful. Belonging is key to survival in the emerging politics of elementary school playground. Noticing differences and calls to conform conflicting in our hearts, we begin to question ourselves and perhaps nurture budding self doubt.

Is this why we seek out love and call our partners “our better halves”? Is that why people like psychoanalyst Adam Philips writes in Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life that “All love stories are frustration stories… To fall in love is to be reminded of a frustration that you didn’t know you had (of one’s formative frustrations, and of one’s attempted self-cures for them); you wanted someone, you felt deprived of something, and then it seems to be there.”

Or do our troubles come from naming something as precious and ephemeral as love far too early. When we name something, we box it in, our labels heavy with baggage, history, and connotation. Poet David Whyte points out that “naming love too early is a beautiful but harrowing human difficulty. Most of our heartbreak comes from attempting to name who or what we love and the way we love, too early in the vulnerable journey of discovery.”

Loving as We Are

When we seek from a place of lack, we attract and find lack. The qualities we see as missing from ourselves we search for in others and while they may seem to complement us well in the early blooms of a relationship, longevity and pleasure come from each developing their own strong core. Relying on others to fulfill what we feel is lacking is unfair, untenable, and unworkable in the long run. It is a disservice to ourselves as it limits our own growth and to the one we love as it feels like a heavy weight. Love is not possession.

In The Origins of Others, Toni Morrison writes “how vulnerable we are to distancing ourselves and forcing our own images onto strangers.” In her account of the fisherwoman – she “fantasized her as my personal shaman” – she pointedly shares that “now she is gone, taking with her my good opinion of myself, which, of course, is unforgivable.” What is happening here? While she speaks here about a stranger, it applies to those we love, how we want to “romance her, if we can, back into our own mirrors.”

The truth is our “good opinion of myself” is sourced not from another person and should not waver with the changing tides of relationships. We are not the waves of the ocean. When we rely on the good words of others, we will find ourselves in servitude and enslaved. Unfree to experience the beautiful reality of who we are and who others are.

There are only versions of ourselves, many of which we have not embraced, most of which we wish to protect ourselves from.

Toni Morrison, The Origins of Others

Feeling into this Valentine’s Day

At every turn we are gifted with opportunities to change the trajectory of our relationships and our life. We don’t always notice them and now, in these fast-changing times, the old ways no longer work. Sometimes it’s like WTF. What Tom Kenyon has called “perpetual markers” – how we make sense of the world through our five senses – are disappearing, leaving us in that liminal space, the null zone, between the old dissolving and the new emerging.

In these transition states of consciousness, we can no longer rely on external markers and reference points. It can be overwhelming and disorienting – it’s also a good thing.

Because our habits of perception shape our perception (Kenyon), our habits and beliefs are up for questioning in a process of self-inquiry. The more we expand our inner space, our outer space becomes greater “wiggle room” to navigate through challenging situations. Holding hard and fast to “the rules” only intensifies the stressors and narrows our perspective. This indeed is a powerful and creative vortex we are in. What we do is up to us. What we believe about love are our internal markers and cosmic stars by which we navigate our life. Are we guided by stars or illusions in play of light?

What do we really think about love? What possible entanglements and misdefinitions have we created? These barriers to love? What are our self-protecting behaviour that distance us from true love? As Brené Brown writes on LinkedIn – “Armour suffocates courage and cages our hearts. The goal is to create spaces where armour is neither necessary nor rewarded.”

This February 14 (2019) let us make a pledge to release any low-vibrational, non-beneficial or harmful beliefs we may have around love, giving it, receiving, being worthy of it, needing it, scoffing at it… Not sure how to start? Here are the energies of the day you can tap into.

The Moon in Gemini

The moon moves through the zodiac spending about two days in each sign. On Valentine’s Day, the moon is still in Gemini. This is a mutable air sign, ruled by Mercury. Gemini, the twins, is the energy of sociability, quick thinking, versatility, changeability, charm, and adaptability. They change quickly and easily, reflecting their environment and also resist being rooted. Eternal youth, they are Peter Pan. They are born storytellers. They can be chatterboxes and when unscrupulous, are adept at talking their way out of everything, rather than take responsibility and communicate effectively through listening deeply.

Gemini rules the lungs, clavicle, arms, and hands. In Jin Shin Jyutsu, Safety Energy Lock 22 sits on the clavicles and means “complete.” It is about adaptability, victory over limitations. 22 amplifies our inhale, which is related also to our ability to receive.

It also rules the nervous system. With self care and awareness, the sensitive nervous system will be nourished rather than burned out. Constant movement needs to be balanced with relaxation and rest.

According to the modern interpretation of the Tzolkin, the Gregorian date of Valentine’s day – February 14 2019 – falls as the eighth day of the Red Serpent Wavespell within the Blue Castle of Transformation. A powerful Galactic Activation Portal with heightened sense and intense energy, this day is Yellow Galactic Human. Integrity, harmonization, free will, wisdom.

The question for this day is “How am I using my Free Will to make conscious choices when integrating all of my experiences?” 1

Within this time=art approach, we can also work with the 13 tones as they relate to our 13 joints. The Yellow Galactic Human corresponds to our left shoulder (relating back to the rulership of Gemini discussed above. We can look at joints – their condition and flexibility – as a clue to our inner flexibility, our ability to move freely in the physical space as in our inner space.

When we are flexible and open to new ideas of being, to otherness, and perhaps to the belief that we are all worthy, we become quantum attractors to high vibrational energies like love. Because so much love-centred energy is focused on this one day – Valentine’s Day – when more of us release the old paradigms, the fear-based recoils, and the limited definition of love, the more we change and upgrade the matrix of this concept and energy to a more expansive one. Love is love.

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Sandra Shih / About Author

Sandra Shih is the editor of What Therapy. She is also a Jin Shin Jyutsu and Quantum Biofeedback practitioner and a certified Heartmath Resilience Advantage Trainer. Her focus is self-care and resilience through effective energetic management.